Monday, April 09, 2012

Answering Deborah Greene

Deborah Greene is the well known Tea Party activist in Watauga County who opposed “high-impact industry” zoning in 2002, who opposed construction of the new Watauga High School a few years ago, who opposed the quarter-cent sales tax increase proposed by the Republican county commissioners last year (after it appeared the money might go to the school system), and who is now the leader for getting Amendment 1 passed here in the May 8th primary election. Oh, yeah, and she wants a seat on our county Board of Education and is running in the May 8th primary.

She had a great deal to say down-column on Amendment 1, in three different posts (under the piece titled “Where the Pro-Discrimination Folks Are Getting Their Talking Points.”

1. Greene clears one thing up pretty quickly and definitively: Amendment 1 is all about writing the dictates of her religion into the state’s Constitution (her protestations to the contrary notwithstanding). “We know what God says,” writes Greene. That “we” contracts and expands rather freely, I’ve noticed, and is mighty susceptible to politics, especially the politics of the moment (not to mention the charisma of certain religious preachers). On that basis alone, and in the shadow of a long history in our Republic of separating Church from State, I would have to oppose her Amendment and her religious, busy-body stewing over the private lives of fellow citizens.

2. Greene writes, “Why did government think it was necessary to define marriage at all? Government saw the need, for the common good, to establish a law that would protect children and promote/encourage the family. Yes, we have divorce; but, we have divorce laws.”

Government is involved in marriage because marriage is a legal contract, with remedies for breach (adultery) and rules for dissolution (divorce and child custody when children are involved). Contract law is a good deal less “sacred” and a good deal more practical than Greene seems to understand or acknowledge.

Understanding that marriage is a contract should help Greene understand why her Amendment 1 would violate the rights of people legally prevented from entering into that contract and thereby having remedies for damages due to breach and no access to orderly dissolution (not to mention the several benefits given to married couples via tax law, etc.). She either doesn’t get that or is being deliberately obtuse.

I’ve read that sentence repeatedly and have decided that it’s the result of not wanting to admit that she’s perfectly happy and prepared to practice discrimination against a minority via our state’s Constitution, but she doesn’t want to admit it, so she once again hauls in God to cover herself.

Deborah Greene is fond of pushing the Christian portions of the NC Constitution and conveniently forgetting the US Constitution - which was NOT founded on Christian values, but rather the value of separation of the church and state that led so many Europeans to flee Europe to establish a place of religious freedom in the New World. This application of Christian values forced upon the people is no different than the persecution that led to the founding of our country. I do not believe we need to move out of NC to escape this religious persecution. The separation of church and state and equal protection clauses of the US Constitution should protect us here. This is the best reason to vote against amendment #1 to let religious zealots like DG know that, while it is fabulous to have your own beliefs, it is criminal to force those beliefs on others. How do we prosecute Dan Soucek for intentionally violating the US Constitution?

The Equal Protection Clause, part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, provides that "no state shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."[1] The Equal Protection Clause can be seen as an attempt to secure the promise of the United States' professed commitment to the proposition that "all men are created equal"[2] by empowering the judiciary to enforce that principle against the states.[3] The Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause applies only to state governments, but the requirement of equal protection has been read to apply to the federal government as a component of Fifth Amendment due process.

You keep using the term fanatics. People standing up against discrimination are fanatics? I think maybe your warped sense of right and wrong is incorrectly leading you to the term fanatic - and to vote the wrong way.

What about contracts? Every one can have one and it has been argued on this blog that these are all that should exist. Therefore, according to this blog everyone has equal rights and the Fourteenth amendment is not relative.

Either way it goes, it is going to be fun to see the outcome of this election.

Biblical Marriage: I wish people would really look at what that means. Here's a great piece that went around the Internet a couple years ago when the issue of amending the federal constitution was going around. If you want the constitution to reflect Biblical marriage, let's go all the way and pass this amendment (you can look up every one of these verses for yourself):A. Marriage in the United States shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women. (Gen 29:17-28; II Sam 3:2-5) B. Marriage shall not impede a man's right to take concubines, in addition to his wife or wives. (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21) C. A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. (Deut 22:13-21) D. Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be forbidden. (Gen 24:3; Num 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12; Neh 10:30) E. Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any State, nor anystate or federal law, shall be construed to permit divorce. (Deut 22:19; Mark 10:9) F. If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother's widow or deliberately does not give herchildren, he shall pay a fine of one shoe, and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law.(Gen. 38:6-10; Deut 25:5-10) G. In lieu of marriage, if there are no acceptable men in your town, it is required that you get your dad drunk and have sex with him (even if he had previouslyoffered you up as a sex toy to men young and old), tag-teaming with any sisters you may have. Of course, this rule applies only if you are female. (Gen 19:31-36)

Happily, the constitutionality of Obamacare is currently pending before the Supreme Court.

They didn't have the benefit of your wisdom on it. Maybe if you could have determined it's contitutionality, like you are doing on the Amendment 1 issue, you could have saved the taxpayers millions of dollars.

Is there a place we can send these constitutional question to you so that you can determine for us and not have to spend all this court time?

By the way, my only point was that you are asking how to prosecute Soucek for violating the constitution. I only asked if you would apply the same concept to Obama if and when his Obamacare is ruled unconstitutional.

about

J.W. Williamson was the founding editor in 1972 of the Appalachian Journal: A Regional Studies Review, which he edited until July of 2000. He has taught college classes in Appalachian history, cultural politics, and literature, and he has lectured widely on the pop-culture history of "Appalachia" in the American consciousness. His books include Interviewing Appalachia, Southern Mountaineers in Silent Films, and Hillbillyland: What the Mountains Did to the Movies and What the Movies Did to the Mountains. He has won the Thomas Wolfe Award given by the Western North Carolina Historical Society, the Laurel Leaves Award given by the Appalachian Consortium, a special Weatherford Award given by Berea College, and the Cratis Williams-James Brown Award given by the Appalachian Studies Association.

The views expressed on WataugaWatch are solely those of J.W. Williamson or individual contributors and are not necessarily shared nor endorsed by the Watauga County Democratic Party nor by any other adults of sound mind in this or any other universe.